Metrics

Understanding the metrics component of DC/OS

Metrics in DC/OS, version 1.12 or newer, use Telegraf to collect and process data. Telegraf provides metrics from DC/OS cluster hosts, containers running on those hosts, and from applications running on DC/OS using the statsd process. Telegraf is natively integrated with DC/OS. By default, it exposes metrics in Prometheus format from port 61091 on each node, and in JSON format through the DC/OS Metrics API.

Application: Metrics emitted from any application running on the Universal Container Runtime.

Telegraf is included in the DC/OS distribution and runs on every host in the cluster. Because Telegraf provides a plugin-driven architecture, custom DC/OS plugins provide metrics on the performance of DC/OS workloads and DC/OS itself.

Telegraf collects application and custom metrics through the dcos_statsd plugin. A dedicated StatsD server is started for each new task. Any metrics received by the StatsD server are tagged with the task name and its service name. The address of the server is provided by environment variables (STATSD_UDP_HOST and STATSD_UDP_PORT). Note that when a task finishes, any metrics it has emitted that haven’t yet been gathered by Telegraf will be discarded. The metrics collected by dcos_statsd are gathered every 30 seconds. To ensure a task’s metrics are gathered, the task must run for at least 30 seconds.

For more information about the list of metrics that are automatically collected by DC/OS, read Metrics Reference documentation.

Upgrading from 1.11

DC/OS 1.12 includes an updated statsd server implementation for application metrics. The statsd update fixes an issue with the statsd server implementation in 1.11, which treated all application metrics as gauges, regardless of statsd type.

Dashboards and alerts that rely on counters, histograms, or sets behave differently in 1.12 than in 1.11 as follows:

Gauges report the last received value. There is no change from 1.11 functionality.

Counters report the sum of all received values. In 1.11, counters reported the last received value.

Histograms and timers report _sum, _min and _max metrics. In 1.11, histograms reported the last received value.

Sets report the sum of all unique values. In 1.11, sets reported the last received value.

Additionally, multi-packet metrics and sampling are now available. In 1.11, they were not implemented and resulted in missing metrics.

Troubleshooting

Use the following troubleshooting guidelines to resolve errors:

You can collect metrics about Telegraf’s own performance by enabling the inputs.internal plugin.

You can check the status of the Telegraf systemd unit by running systemctl status dcos-telegraf.